Cannabis is a genus in the family cannabaceae (also known as the hemp family), and the division Manoliophyta (the flowering plants). Cannabis has unique pharmacological properties due to the presence of cannabinoids, a group of more than 100 natural products that mainly accumulate in female flowers. Δ9-Tetrahydrocannabinol (“THC”) is the principle psychoactive cannabinoid and the compound responsible for the analgesic, antiemetic and appetite-stimulating effects of cannabis. Cannabinoid content and composition is highly variable among cannabis plants. Selective breeding of cannabis and improved cultivation practices have led to increased potency in the past several decades. This breeding effort has produced hundreds of strains that differ in cannabinoid composition, as well as appearance and growth characteristics.
Recently, the increased medical and recreational legal use of cannabis has led to a demand for improved cultivation and breeding practices thereby improving the quality and quantity of cannabis available on the marketplace. The widespread medical use and the increasingly popular recreational use have caused cannabis supply shortages.
Current cannabis growth methods require cultivators to set up permanent and complex facilities to properly grow cannabis. Such facilities have limited capabilities, including requiring the installation of many types of equipment and consuming large amounts of energy. For example, a grow facility typically requires a large tract of land to accommodate the large number of plants required to obtain the desired amount of cannabis production. The known cannabis growth methods typically face challenges like fungal infestation, difficulty in controlling the climate in the plants' environment, the requirement of high levels of power consumption to power the necessary environmental controls, and the high level of detailed human interaction required to cultivate and nurture the cannabis plants throughout the grow cycle.
More generally, the current cannabis grow systems are expensive to maintain because of the extensive systems, both technological and human, that are required for a successful grow cycle. As a result, the current grow facilities have space restrictions and grow cycle limitations. Further, the current grow facilities must have experienced cultivators that continually monitor and intervene in all aspects of the cannabis plants' growth cycle, beginning from managing the plants' environment for optimal growth, such as CO2 levels, temperature, humidity, etc. to the plants' cultivation and processing.
Therefore, the art would benefit from less expensive cannabis growth methods and systems that are able to produce higher growth rates, improved plant quality, reduction in fungal infections and other plant pests, produce multiple grow cycles within an optimal, controlled environment.